The D-Pad, analog stick, pause button, and power button, on the Moga Ace Power.

It’s an exciting time to be an iOS gamer. This summer, Apple announced it was going to implement standards for iOS devices to interface with physical controllers, satisfying the demands of gamers who for years have wanted a more console-like way to play iOS games.

The First Apple-Certified iOS Gaming Controllers Need a Power-Up

Wired

It’s a much nicer object than the Moga Power Ace. Analog button response is good. Full access to back camera.

Tired

Doesn’t work with iPhone 5c. Needs adapter to work with headphones. The sleep/wake button is tiny and frustrating to use. Not enough buttons for some ports or shooters. Doesn’t work with any cases.

How We Rate

1/10A complete failure in every way

2/10Barely functional; don’t buy it

3/10Serious flaws; proceed with caution

4/10Downsides outweigh upsides

5/10Recommended with reservations

6/10A solid product with some issues

7/10Very good, but not quite great

8/10Excellent, with room to kvetch

9/10Nearly flawless, buy it now

10/10Metaphysical product perfection

Yes, some of the genre’s biggest hits are wedded to the touch interface — Angry Birds, Flight Control, Dots — but there’s still a wealth of content that was originally made for consoles. Despite developers’ best attempts, physical controllers remain the ideal way to interface with these iOS ports. Unfortunately, judging from the first two offerings in this burgeoning ecosystem, mobile gamers will have to wait a bit longer for a gaming experience that lives up to the hype.

There are currently only two MFi, or Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad, controllers you can buy: Logitech’s Powershell and Moga’s Ace Power. The former includes four analog right-hand buttons, a D-pad, and two shoulder buttons, as well as a 1800 mAh battery, which rounds out the back panel. It’s amazingly solid-feeling, and Logitech got a lot of the small details right. The Lightning connector has a great deal of flex, making it easier to insert and remove the phone. There are also ports for the iPhone’s speakers, so the sound isn’t completely muffled by the case. Essentially, in button layout, the Powershell mimics the classic SNES controller design.

Moga’s version, on the other hand, adds two shoulder buttons for a total of four, in addition to two shallow-feeling analog sticks. If the Powershell resembles a SNES controller, Moga’s button-layout is more in line with an Xbox or PS3 controller.

That added flexibility comes at a cost, however. Moga’s sliding design is superfluous at best. The option doesn’t work with the iPhone 4 or 4s — it requires a Lightning connector, remember — so it’s hard to see the point in having a design that can accommodate multiple controller lengths. It also makes the Moga feel absurdly cheap. The analog sticks have no depth, the plastic is incredibly light, and it generally has none of the premium feeling you’d want from a $100 accessory.

Both controllers include a built-in battery, which charges through MicroUSB. This is another annoyance as it requires you to carry around a second cord. Both also feature cryptic lights that are supposed to show you the battery status. Interpreting these blinks is nearly impossible, however, unless you know what you’re looking for. Turning on the external battery only gets you get a few extra hours of juice, and frankly I would have preferred a slimmer form factor.

The good news is that using MFi controllers couldn’t be easier: Take a 5th generation iOS device, either the iPhone or the iPod touch, slot it in, and start playing games. It’s easier than pairing something through Bluetooth, and the integration is admirable.

Moga sent over a iPod touch with six games pre-installed, some of which are paid games and some which were free. Dead Trigger 2, a zombie shoot-em-up, features a pretty intuitive and innovative touch control interface, but playing it with analog joysticks is no comparison. This game needs buttons to really shine. Galaxy on Fire 2 HD, a space shooter, also benefited from physical buttons.

It’s worth noting both of those games require Moga’s controller, and they won’t work with the Logitech Powershell. Despite the Powershell’s superior form factor — which would be perfect for SNES-era ports like Mega Man X or Sonic — I couldn’t find many games that worked with it that I wanted to play. I enjoyed Air Wings, a paper airplane flying game that’s decidedly freemium, but that’s about it.

Which highlights yet another problem: There isn’t a section of the App Store dedicated to controller-compatible games. To find compatible titles you have to search for phrases like “controller support.” Additionally, because there’s no standard way to declare controller support, it’s difficult to ascertain whether the game works with a Powershell or needs the extra buttons the Ace Power provides. Any game updated for iOS 7 should have D-pad support, where the buttons are “mapped” to onscreen controls, but even that’s different from native MFi controller support. It’s frustrating and confusing and the entire system is not what you would expect from an Apple-spearheaded initiative.

Yet there are still plenty of reasons to be excited. Playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, offered one of them. The game is the very definition of a console-level title, and it’s fully MFi compatible. Previous GTA ports were fun, but frustrating. It was hard to drive, or bike, or shoot. But Moga’s controller makes that all go away. For a brief hour or two (I lost track), I was simply in the world of San Andreas. It was not until iOS told me my battery was under 20 percent that I remembered I was playing the title on my smartphone.

Ultimately, these MFi-certified controllers suffer from the same problems a lot of first-generation products do. The ecosystem isn’t fully developed, and there are plenty of bugs that still need to be worked out. But with newer controllers on the way from gaming companies like Razer and SteelSeries, there’s no reason to believe this won’t happen. If you were to go with one currently available on the market, I’d opt for the Ace Power because the extra buttons open up a wider range of games to play. Wait 6 months, though, and I’d be willing to bet you’ll get a lot more for your money.

Logitech Powershell

Rating: 5 out of 10

Moga Ace Power

WIRED You can play games, like Grand Theft Auto, like they were meant to be played. Sliding design means you’re not putting pressure on the Lightning connector to insert or remove the handset. Two analog sticks allows it to play first person shooters. Works with the iPhone 5c. Headphones plug in without an adapter.

TIRED It feels incredibly cheap, from the body to the buttons. The sliding design is classic over-engineering. No iPad support.